Innate and adventitious
ideas

One view on the nature of ideas is that there exist some ideas
(called innate ideas) which are so general and abstract,
that they could not have arisen as a representation of any object
of our perception, but
rather were, in some sense, always in the mind before we could
learn them. These are distinguished from adventitious
ideas which are images or concepts which are accompanied by
the judgment that they are caused by some object outside of the
mind.[2]

Another view holds that we only discover ideas in the same way
that we discover the real world, from personal experiences. The
view that humans acquire all or almost all their behavioral traits
from nurture (life experiences) is known as tabula rasa ("blank
slate"). Most of the confusions in the way of ideas arise at least
in part from the use of the term "idea" to cover both the
representation percept and the object of conceptual thought. This
can be illustrated in terms of the doctrines of innate
ideas, "concrete ideas versus abstract ideas", as
well as "simple ideas versus complex ideas". [3]

Philosophy

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Plato

Plato was one of the earliest
philosopher to provide a detailed discussion of ideas. He
considered the concept of idea in the realm
of metaphysics and
its implications for epistemology. He asserted that
there is realm of Forms or Ideas, which exist independently of
anyone who may have thought of these ideas. Material things are
then imperfect and transient reflections or instantiations of the
perfect and unchanging ideas. From this it follows that these Ideas
are the principal reality
(see also idealism). In
contrast to the individual objects of sense experience, which
undergo constant change and flux, Plato held that ideas are
perfect, eternal, and immutable. Consequently, Plato considered
that knowledge of material things is not really knowledge; real
knowledge can only be had of unchanging ideas.

René
Descartes

Descartes often wrote of the meaning of
idea as an image or representation, often but not
necessarily "in the mind", which was well known in the vernacular. In spite of
the fact that Descartes is usually credited with the invention of
the non-Platonic use of the term, we find him at first following
this vernacular use.b In his Meditations on First
Philosophy he says, "Some of my thoughts are like images of
things, and it is to these alone that the name 'idea' properly
belongs." He sometimes maintained that ideas were innate[4] and
uses of the term idea diverge from the original primary
scholastic use. He provides multiple non-equivalent definitions of
the term, uses it to refer to as many as six distinct kinds of
entities, and divides ideas inconsistently into various
genetic categories. [1] For him
knowledge took the form of ideas and philosophical investigation is
the deep consideration of these ideas. Many times however his
thoughts of knowledge and ideas were like those of Plotinus and Neoplatonism. In
Neoplatonism the Intelligence (Nous) is the true first principle -- the
determinate, referential 'foundation' (arkhe) -- of all
existents; for it is not a self-sufficient entity like the One, but
rather possesses the ability or capacity to contemplate both the
One, as its prior, as well as its own thoughts, which Plotinus
identifies with the Platonic Ideas or Forms (eide)[2]. A
non-philosophical definition of Nous is good
sense (a.k.a. "common sense"). Descartes is quoted as
saying, "Of all things, good sense is the most
fairly distributed: everyone thinks he is so well supplied with it
that even those who are the hardest to satisfy in every other
respect never desire more of it than they already have."[3]

John
Locke

In striking contrast to Plato’s use of idea [5] is that
of John Locke in his
masterpiece An Essay Concerning
Human Understanding in the Introduction where he defines
idea as "It being that term which, I think, serves
best to stand for whatsoever is the object of the understanding
when a man thinks, I have used it to express whatever is meant by
phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which the mind can be
employed about in thinking ; and I could not avoid frequently
using it." He said he regarded the book necessary to examine our
own abilities and see what objects our understandings were, or were
not, fitted to deal with. In his philosophy other outstanding
figures followed in his footsteps - Hume and Kant in the 18th
century, Arthur Schopenhauer in the 19th
century, and Bertrand Russell, Ludwig
Wittgenstein, and Karl Popper in the 20th century. Locke
always believed in good sense - not pushing things
to extremes and on taking fully into account the plain facts of the
matter. He considered his common sense ideas "good-tempered,
moderate, and down-to-earth." c

David
Hume

Hume differs from
Locke by limiting "idea" to the more or less vague mental
reconstructions of perceptions, the perceptual process being
described as an "impression."[6] Hume
shared with Locke the basic empiricist premise that it is only from
life experiences (whether their own or others') that humans'
knowledge of the existence of anything outside of themselves can be
ultimately derived, that they shall carry on doing what they are
prompted to do by their emotional drives of varying kinds. In
choosing the means to those ends, they shall follow their
accustomed associations of ideas.d Hume has contended
and defended the notion that "reason alone is merely the 'slave of
the passions'"[7][8]

Immanuel
Kant

Immanuel Kant
defines an "idea" as opposed to a "concept". "Regulator ideas" are ideals that one
must tend towards, but by definition may not be completely
realized. Liberty, according
to Kant, is an idea. The autonomy of the
rational and universalsubject is opposed to the determinism of the empirical subject.[9] Kant
felt that it is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy
exists. The business of philosophy he thought was not to give
rules, but to analyze the private judgements of good common
sense.e

Rudolf
Steiner

Whereas Kant declares limits to knowledge ("we can never know
the thing in itself"), in his epistemological
work, Rudolf
Steiner sees ideas as "objects of experience" which
the mind apprehends, much as the eye apprehends light. In Goethean Science (1883), he declares,
"Thinking… is no more and no less an organ of perception than the
eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colors and the ear sounds, so
thinking perceives ideas." He holds this to be the premise upon
which Goethe made his natural-scientific
observations.

Wilhelm
Wundt

Wundt
widens the term from Kant's usage to include conscious
representation of some object or process of the external
world. In so doing, he includes not only ideas of memory and imagination, but also perceptual processes,
whereas other psychologists confine the term to the
first two groups. One of Wundt's main concerns was to investigate
conscious processes in their own context by experiment and introspection. He regarded both of these
as exact methods, interrelated in that experimentation
created optimal conditions for introspection. Where the
experimental method failed, he turned to other objectively
valuable aids, specifically to those products of cultural
communal life which lead one to infer particular mental motives.
Outstanding among these are speech, myth, and social custom.
Wundt designed the basic mental activity apperception - a unifying function which
should be understood as an activity of the will. Many aspects of
his empirical physiological psychology are used today. One is his
principles of mutually enhanced contrasts and of assimilation and
dissimilation (i.e. in color and form perception and his advocacy
of objective methods of expression and of recording
results, especially in language. Another is the principle of
heterogony of ends - that multiply motivated acts lead to
unintended side effects which in turn become motives for new
actions.[10]

Charles
Sanders Peirce

C. S. Peirce published the first
full statement of pragmatism in his important works "How to Make Our Ideas Clear"
(1878) and "The Fixation of
Belief" (1877) [11]. In
"How to Make Our Ideas Clear" he proposed that a clear
idea (in his study he uses concept and idea as synonymic) is
defined as one, when it is apprehended such as it will be
recognized wherever it is met, and no other will be mistaken for
it. If it fails of this clearness, it is said to be obscure. He
argued that to understand an idea clearly we should ask ourselves
what difference its application would make to our evaluation of a
proposed solution to the problem at hand. Pragmatism (a term he appropriated for use
in this context), he defended, was a method for ascertaining the
meaning of terms (as a theory of meaning). The originality of his
ideas is in their rejection of what was accepted as a view and
understanding of knowledge by scientists for some 250 years, i.e.
that, he pointed, knowledge was an impersonal fact. Peirce
contended that we acquire knowledge as participants, not
as spectators. He felt "the real" is which, sooner or
later, information acquired through ideas and knowledge with the
application of logical reasoning would finally result in. He also
published many papers on logic in relation to ideas.

G.
F. Stout and J. M. Baldwin

G. F. Stout and
J. M.
Baldwin, in the Dictionary of Philosophy and
Psychology[4], define "idea"
as "the reproduction with a more or less adequate image, of an object not actually present to the
senses." They point out that an idea and a perception are by
various authorities contrasted in various ways. "Difference in
degree of intensity", "comparative absence of bodily movement on
the part of the subject", "comparative dependence on mental
activity", are suggested by psychologists as characteristic of an
idea as compared with a perception.

It should be observed that an idea, in the narrower and
generally accepted sense of a mental reproduction, is frequently
composite. That is, as in the example given above of the idea of
chair, a great many objects, differing materially in detail, all
call a single idea. When a man, for example, has obtained an idea
of chairs in general by comparison with which he can say "This is a
chair, that is a stool", he has what is known as an "abstract idea"
distinct from the reproduction in his mind of any particular chair
(see abstraction).
Furthermore a complex idea may not have any corresponding physical
object, though it particular constituent elements may severally be
the reproductions of actual perceptions. Thus the idea of a centaur is a complex mental
picture composed of the ideas of man
and horse, that of a mermaid of a woman and a fish.

In anthropology and
the social sciences

Diffusion
studies explore the spread of ideas from culture to culture. Some
anthropological theories hold that all cultures imitate ideas from
one or a few original cultures, the Adam of the Bible or several
cultural circles that overlap. Evolutionary diffusion theory holds
that cultures are influenced by one another, but that similar ideas
can be developed in isolation.

Semantics

James Boswell
recorded Dr.Samuel
Johnson' s opinion about ideas. Johnson claimed that they are
mental images or internal visual pictures. As such, they have no
relation to words or the concepts which are designated by verbal
names.

He was particularly indignant against the almost universal use
of the word idea in the sense of notion or
opinion, when it is clear that idea can only
signify something of which an image can be formed in the mind. We
may have an idea or image of a mountain, a tree,
a building; but we cannot surely have an idea or
image of an argument or proposition. Yet
we hear the sages of the law 'delivering their ideas upon
the question under consideration;' and the first speakers in
parliament 'entirely coinciding in the idea which has been
ably stated by an honourable member;' — or 'reprobating an
idea unconstitutional, and fraught with the most dangerous
consequences to a great and free country.' Johnson called this
'modern cant.'

Validity of
ideas

In the objective worth of our ideas there remains the
problem of the validity.
As all cognition is by
ideas, it is obvious that the question of the validity of
our ideas in this broad sense is that of the truth of our knowledge as a whole. Otherwise to dispute
this is to take up the position of skepticism. This has often been pointed out
as a means intellectual suicide. Any chain of reasoning (common
sense) by which it is attempted to demonstrate the falsity of our
ideas has to employ the very concept of ideas
itself. Then insofar as it demands assent to the conclusion, it
implies belief in the validity of all the ideas employed
in the premises of the argument.

To assent the fundamental mathematical and logical axioms,
including that of the principle of contradiction, implies admission of the
truth of the ideas expressed in these principles. With
respect to the objective worth of ideas, as involved in perception generally, the
question raised is that of the existence of an independent material
world comprising other human beings. The idealism of David Hume and John Stuart Mill would lead logically
to solipsism (the denial
of any others besides ourselves). The main foundation of all idealism and skepticism is
the assumption (explicit or implicit), that the mind can never know
what is outside of itself. This is to say that an idea as
a cognition can never go
outside of itself. This can be further expressed as we can never
reach to and mentally apprehend anything outside of anything of
what is actually a present state of our own consciousness.

First, this is based on a prior assumption for which no real
proof is or can be given

Second, it is not only not self-evident, but directly contrary
to what our mind affirms to be our direct intellectual
experience.

What is possible for a human mind to apprehend cannot be laid
down beforehand. It must be ascertained by careful observations and
by study of the process of cognition. This postulates that the mind
cannot apprehend or cognize any reality existing outside of itself
and is not only a self-evident proposition, it is directly contrary
to what such observation and the testimony of mankind affirms to be
our actual intellectual experience.

John Stuart
Mill and most extreme idealists have to admit the validity of
memory and expectation. This is to say that in every act of memory
or expectation which refers to any experience outside the present
instant, our cognition is transcending the present modifications of
the mind and judging about reality beyond and distinct from the
present states of consciousness. Considering the question as
specially concerned with universal concepts, only the
theory of moderate realism adopted by Aristotle and Saint Thomas can claim to guarantee
objective value to our ideas. According to the nominalist and conceptualist
theories there is no true correlate in rerum naturâ
corresponding to the universal term.

Mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and the rest claim
that their universal propositions are true and deal with realities. It is involved in
the very notion of science that the physical laws formulated by the
mind do mirror the working of agents in the external universe. The
general terms of these sciences and the ideas which they
signify have objective correlatives in the common natures and
essences of the objects with which these sciences deal. Otherwise
these general statements are unreal and each science is nothing
more than a consistently arranged system of barren propositions
deduced from empty arbitrary definitions. These postulates then have no more genuine
objective value than any other coherently devised scheme of
artificial symbols standing for imaginary beings. However the
fruitfulness of science and the constant verifications of its
predictions are incompatible with such a hypothesis.[5]

Relationship of ideas to modern legal time- and scope-limited
monopolies

Relationship between
ideas and patents

On Susceptibility to
Exclusive Property

"It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,)
that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their
inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to
their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of
any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be
singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to
inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the
subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate
property in an acre of land, for instance.

By a universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable,
belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the
moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the
occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift
of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It
would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an
individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive
and stable property.

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all
others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking
power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess
as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged,
it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver
cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is
that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the
whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction
himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine,
receives light without darkening me.

That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the
globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement
of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently
designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over
all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like
the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being,
incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions
then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.

Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from
them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce
utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and
convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from
anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that
England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which
ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of
an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great
case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking,
other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more
embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed
that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as
fruitful as England in new and useful devices."

To protect the cause of invention and innovation, the legal
constructions of Copyrights and Patents was established. Patent law regulates various
aspects related to the functional manifestation of inventions based
on new ideas or an incremental improvements to existing ones. Thus,
patents have a direct relationship to ideas.

Relationship between
ideas and copyrights

In some cases, authors can be granted limited legal monopolies on the manner in which certain
works are expressed. This is known colloquially as copyright, although the
term intellectual property is used
mistakenly in place of copyright. Copyright law regulating
the aforementioned monopolies generally does not cover the actual
ideas. The law does not bestow the legal status of property upon ideas per se.
Instead, laws purport to regulate events related to the usage,
copying, production, sale and other forms of exploitation of the
fundamental expression of a work, that may or may not carry ideas.
Copyright law is fundamentally different to patent law in this respect: patents do grant
monopolies on ideas (more on this below).

A copyright is meant
to regulate some aspects of the usage of expressions of a work,
not an idea. Thus, copyrights have a negative
relationship to ideas.

Work means a tangible medium of expression. It may be an
original or derivative work of art, be it literary, dramatic,
musical recitation, artistic, related to sound recording, etc. In
(at least) countries adhering to the Berne Convention, copyright
automatically starts covering the work upon the original creation
and fixation thereof, without any extra steps. While creation
usually involves an idea, the idea in itself does not suffice for
the purposes of claiming copyright.

Relationship
of ideas to confidentiality agreements

Confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements are legal
instruments that assist corporations and individuals in keeping
ideas from escaping to the general public. Generally, these
instruments are covered by contract law.

The translations below need to be checked and inserted
above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any
numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See
instructions at Help:How to check translations.

From BibleWiki

Probably to no other philosophical term have there been attached
so many different shades of meaning as to the word idea. Yet what
this word signifies is of much importance. Its sense in the minds
of some philosophers is the key to their entire system. But from
Descartes onwards usage has become confused and inconstant. Locke,
in particular, ruined the term altogether in English philosophical
literature, where it has ceased to possess any recognized definite
meaning. He tells us himself at the beginning of his "Essay on the
Human Understanding" that in this treatise "the word Idea stands
for whatever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks.
I have used it to express whatever is meant by phantasm, notion,
species, or whatever it is which the mind can be employed about
when thinking." In fact, with him it denotes, indifferently, a
sensation, a perception, an image of the imagination, a concept of
the intellect, an emotional feeling, and sometimes the external
material object which is perceived or imagined.

Contents

HISTORY OF THE TERM

The word was originally Greek, but passed without change into
Latin. It seems first to have meant form, shape, or appearance,
whence, by an easy transition, it acquired the connotation of
nature, or kind. It was equivalent to eidos, of which it
is merely the feminine, but Plato's partiality for this form of the
term and its adoption by the Stoics secured its ultimate triumph
over the masculine. Indeed it was Plato who won for the term idea
the prominent position in the history of philosophy that it
retained for so many centuries. With him the word idea,
contrary to the modern acceptance, meant something that was
primarily and emphatically objective, something outside of our
minds. It is the universal archetypal essence in which all the
individuals coming under a universal concept participate. By
sensuous perception we obtain, according to Plato, an imperfect
knowledge of individual objects; by our general concepts, or
notions, we reach a higher knowledge of the idea of these objects.
But what is the character of the idea itself? What is its relation
to the individual object? And what is its relation to the author or
originator of the individual things? The Platonic doctrine of ideas
is very involved and obscure. Moreover, the difficulty is further
complicated by the facts that the account of the idea given by
Plato in different works is not the same, that the chronological
order of his writings is not certain, and, finally, still more
because we do not know how far the mythological setting is to be
taken literally. Approximately, however, Plato's view seems to come
to this:  To the universal notions, or concepts, which constitute
science, or general knowledge as it is in our mind, there
correspond ideas outside of our mind. These ideas are truly
universal. They possess objective reality in themselves. They are
not something indwelling in the individual things, as, for
instance, form in matter, or the essence which determines the
nature of an object. Each universal idea has its own separate and
independent existence apart from the individual object related to
it. It seems to dwell in some sort of celestial universe (en
ouranio topo). In contrast with the individual objects of
sense experience, which undergo constant change and flux, the ideas
are perfect, eternal, and immutable. Still, there must be some sort
of community between the individual object and the corresponding
idea, between Socrates and the idea "man", between this act of
justice and the idea "justice". This community consists in
"participation" (methexis). The concrete individual
participates, or shares, in the universal idea, and this
participation constitutes it an individual of a certain kind or
nature. But what, then, is this participation, if the idea dwells
in another sphere of existence? It seems to consist in imitation
(mimesis). The ideas are models and prototypes, the
sensible objects are copies, though very imperfect, of these
models. The ideas are reflected in a feeble and obscure way in
them. The idea is the archetype (paradeigma), individual
objects are merely images (eidola). Finally, what
precisely is the celestial universe in which the ideas have
eternally existed, and what is their exact relation to God or to the idea of the
good? For Plato allots to this latter a unique position in the
transcendental region of ideas. Here we meet a fundamental
difference between the answers from two schools of
interpreters.

Aristotle

Aristotle, who, his
critics notwithstanding, was as competent as they to understand
Plato, and was Plato's own pupil, teaches that his master ascribed
to the various ideas an independent, autonomous existence. They are
a multiplicity of isolated essences existing separated from the
individual objects which copy them, and they are united by no
common bond. All the relations subsisting in the hierarchies of our
universal concepts, however, seem in Plato's view to be represented
by analogous relations amongst the autonomous ideas. Aristotle's
interpretation was accepted by St. Thomas and the main body of the
later Scholastics; and much pain has been devoted to establishing
the absurdity of this alleged theory of separation. But the ultra
realism of the Platonic theory of ideas was susceptible of a more
benevolent interpretation, which, moreover, was adopted by nearly
all the early Fathers of the Church. Indeed they found it easier to
Christianize his
philosophy than did Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas to do the like
for that of Aristotle. They
unanimously understood Plato to locate this world of ideas in the
Mind of God, and they explained his
kosmos nontos as a system of Divine conceptions  the
archetypes according to which God was to form in the
future the various species of created beings. With respect to the
origin of our knowledge of these universal ideas, Plato cannot
consistently derive it from sensuous experience. He therefore
teaches that our universal concepts, which correspond to these
ideas, are, strictly speaking, innate, inherited by the soul from a
previous state of existence. There, in that transcendental Eden,
the soul, by direct contemplation of the ideas, acquired these
concepts. Sensible experience of the objects around us now merely
occasions the reminiscence of these pre-natal cognitions. The
acquisition of knowledge is thus, strictly speaking, a process of
recollection. Aristotle vigorously
attacked Plato's theory of universal ideas. He himself teaches that
sensible experience of the concrete individual is the beginning and
foundation of all cognition. Intellectual knowledge, however, is
concerned with the universal. But it must have been derived from
the experience of the individual which, therefore, in some way
contains the universal. The universal cannot exist, as such, apart
from the individual. It is immanent in the individual as the
essence, or nature, specifically common to all members of the
class. Since this essence, or nature, constitutes the thing
specifically what it is, man, horse, triangle, etc., it furnishes
the answer to the question: What is the thing? (Quid
est?). It has therefore been termed the quiddity of
the thing. In Greek, according to Aristotle, the to
ti en enai, eidos, morphe, and ousia deutera are one
and the same thing  the essence, or quiddity, which determines the
specific nature of the thing. This is the foundation for the
general concept in the mind, which abstracts the universal form
(eidos nonton) from the individual. Several of the early
Fathers, as we have said, interpreted Plato benevolently, and
sought to harmonize as much of his doctrine as possible with Christian
theology. For them the ideas are the creative thoughts of God, the archetypes, or
patterns, or forms in the mind of the Author of the universe
according to which he has made the various species of creatures.
"Ideæ principales formæ quædam vel rationes rerum stabiles atque
incommutabiles, quæ in divinâ intelligentiâ continentur" (St.
August., "De Div.", Q. xlvi). These Divine ideas must not be looked
on as distinct entities, for this would be inconsistent with the
Divine simplicity. They are identical with the Divine Essence
contemplated by the Divine Intellect as susceptible of imitation
ad extra.

Scholastic Period

This doctrine of the Fathers received its complete elaboration
from the Schoolmen in the great controversy concerning universals
(de universalibus) which occupied a prominent place in the
history of philosophy from the tenth to the thirteenth century. The
ultra-realists tended towards the Platonic view in regard to the
real existence of universal forms, as such, outside of the human
mind, though they differed as to their explanation of the nature of
this universality, and its participation by the individuals. Thus
William of Champeaux seems to have understood the universal to
exist essentially in its completeness in each individual of the
species. In essence these individuals are but one, and whatever
difference they have is one of accidents, not of substance. This
would lead to a pantheistic conception of the universe, akin to
that of Scotus Eriugena. On the other hand, the extreme Nominalist
view, advocated by Roscelin, denies all real universality, except
that of words.  A common name may be applied to the several
objects of a species or genus, but neither in the existing
individuals nor in the mind is there a genuine basis or correlate
for this community of predication. The Aristotelean doctrine
of moderate realism, which was already in possession before the
eleventh century, held its ground throughout the whole period of
Scholasticism, notwithstanding the appearance of distinguished
champions of the rival hypothesis, and at last permanently
triumphed with the establishment of the authority of St. Thomas.
This theory, which in its complete form we may call the Scholastic
doctrine of universals, distinguished universalia ante res, in
rebus, et post res. The universal exists in the Divine Mind
only as an idea, model, or prototype of a plurality of creatures
before the individual is realized. Genus or species cannot
in order of time precede the individual. Plato's separate ideas,
did they physically exist, would have been individualized by their
existence and have thus ceased to be universals. The universal
exists in the individual only potentially or fundamentally, not
actually or formally as universal. That is, in each of the
individuals of the same species there is a similar nature which the
mind, exercising its abstractive activity, can represent by a
concept or idea as separate, or apart, from its individualizing
notes. The nature, or essence, so conceived is capable of being
realized in an indefinite number of individuals, and therefore was
justly described as "potentially universal". Finally, by a
subsequent reflective generalizing act, the mind considers this
concept, or idea, as representative of a plurality of such
individuals, and thereby constitutes it a formally universal
concept, or idea. In fact, it is only in the concept, or idea, that
true universality is possible, for only in the vital mental act is
there really reference of the one to the many. Even a common name,
or any other general symbol, viewed as an entity, is merely an
individual. It is its meaning, or significant reference, that gives
it universality. But the fact that in the external world individual
beings of the same species, e. g., men, oak trees, gold, iron,
etc., have perfectly similar natures, affords an objective
foundation for our subjective universal ideas and thereby makes
physical science possible.

Diverse Meaning of Idea with Medieval and
Modern Scholastic Writers

We have just been using the term idea in its modern Scholastic
sense as synonymous with "concept". By the Schoolmen the terms
conceptio, conceptus mentis, species intelligibilis, and verbum
mentale were all employed, sometimes as equivalents and sometimes
as connoting slight differences, to signify the universal
intellectual concepts of the mind. The term idea, however, probably
in consequence of the Platonic usage, was for a long period
employed chiefly, if not solely, to signify the forms or archetypes
of things existing in the Divine Mind. Even when referred to the
human mind, it commonly bore the significance of forma
exemplaris, the model pictured by the practical intellect with
a view to artistic production, rather than that of a representation
effected in the intellect by the object apprehended. The former was
described as an exercising of the "practical", the latter of the
"speculative", intellect, though the faculty was recognized as
really the same. St. Thomas, however, says that idea may
stand for the act of the speculative intellect also  "Sed tamen si
ideam communiter appellamus similitudinem vel rationem, sic idea
etiam ad speculativam cognitionem pure pertinere potest" (QQ. Disp.
de Ideis, a. 3). But I have not been able to find any passage in
which he himself employs the word idea in the modern
Scholastic sense, as equivalent to the intellectual concept of the
human mind. The same is true as regards Suarez; so that the
recognized general usage of the term in modern Scholastic textbooks
does not seem to go much farther back than the time of
Descartes.

Modern Philosophy

Passing from the Schoolmen to modern philosophy, whilst, among
those Catholic writers who adhered in general to the medieval
philosophy, the term idea came to be more and more used to
designate the intellectual concept of the human mind, outside of
the Scholastic tradition it was no longer confined to intellectual
acts. Descartes seems to have been the first influential thinker to
introduce the vague and inaccurate use of the word idea
which characterizes modern speculation generally. Locke, however,
as we have mentioned, is largely responsible for the confusion in
respect to the term which has prevailed in English philosophical
literature. Descartes tells us that he designates generally by the
term idea "all that is in our minds when we conceive a thing"; and
he says, in another place, "idea est ipsa res cogitata quatenus est
objective in intellectu." The Cartesian meaning of idea seems,
then, to be the general psychical determinant of cognition. This
wide signification was generally adopted by Gassendi, Hobbes, and
many other writers, and the problem of the origin of ideas became
that of the origin of all knowledge. There is, however, throughout,
a reversal of the Platonic usage, for in its modern sense
idea connotes something essentially subjective and
intra-mental. With Plato, on the other hand, the ideas were
emphatically objective. Spinoza
defined idea as mentis conceptus, and warned his readers
to distinguish it from phantasms of the imagination, imagines
rerum quas imaginamus. We have cited at the beginning of this
article Locke's vague definition. The confused and inconsistent
usage to which he gave currency contributed much to the success of
Berkeley's idealism and Hume's scepticism. From the position
frequently adopted by Locke, that ideas are the object of our
knowledge, that is, that what the mind knows or perceives are
ideas, the conclusions drawn by Berkeley, that we have therefore no
justification for asserting the existence of anything else but
ideas, and that the hypothesis of a material world, the unperceived
external causes of these ideas, is useless and unwarranted, was an
obvious inference. Hume starts with the assumption that all
cognitive acts of the mind may be divided into "impressions" (acts
of perception), and "ideas", faint images of the former, and then
lays down the doctrine that "the difference between these consists
in the degrees of force and liveliness with which they strike on
the mind." He then shows without much difficulty that genuine
knowledge of reality of any kind is logically impossible. Kant
assigned quite a new meaning to the term. He defines ideas as
"concepts of the unconditioned which is thought of as a last
condition for every conditioned". The transcendental ideas of
metaphysics with him are, God, freedom, and
immortality, "a pure concept" (ein reiner Begriff) may be
either a Verstandesbegriff (notion), or a
Vernunftbegriff (idea), the difference being that "the
latter transcends the possibility of experience." In the Hegelian
philosophy the term again assumed an objective meaning, though not
that of Plato. It is a name for the Absolute and the World process
viewed as a logical category. It is the absolute truth of which
everything that exists is the expression.

Such being the varying signification of the term in the history
of philosophy, we may now return to consider more closely its
adopted meaning among Catholic philosophers. The term
idea, and especially universal idea, being
generally accepted by them as equivalent to universal concept, it
is the product of the intellect, or understanding, as distinguished
from the sensuous faculties. It is an act of the mind which
corresponds to a general term in ordinary speech. Thus, in the
sentence, "water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen", the three
words water, oxygen, and hydrogen stand
for any genuine samples of these substances. The names have a
definite yet universal meaning. The mental act by which that
universal meaning is realized is the universal idea. It is a quite
distinct thing from the particular sensation or image of the
imagination, more or less vivid, which may accompany the
intellectual act. The image may be distinct or confused, lively or
feeble. It probably varies from moment to moment. It is felt to be
of a subjective, contingent, and accidental character, differing
considerably from the corresponding image in other persons' minds.
It is, however, always an individualistic concrete entity,
referring to a single object. Not so, however, with the
intellectual idea. This possesses stability. It is unchangeable,
and it is universal. It refers with equal truth to every possible
specimen of the class. Herein lies the difference between thought
and sensuous feeling, between spiritual and organic activity (see
INTELLECT).

ORIGIN OF IDEAS

Given the fact that the human mind in mature life is in
possession of such universal ideas, or concepts, the question
arises: How have they been attained? Plato, as we have incidentally
observed, conceives them to be an inheritance through reminiscence
from a previous state of existence. Sundry Christian
philosophers of ultra-spiritualist tendencies have described them
as innate, planted in the soul at its creation by God. On the other hand,
Empiricists and Materialists have endeavoured to explain all our
intellectual ideas as refined products of our sensuous faculties.
For a fuller account and criticism of the various theories we must
refer the reader to any of the Catholic textbooks on psychology. We
can give here but the briefest outline of the doctrine usually
taught in the Catholic schools of philosophy. Man has a double set
of cognitive faculties sensuous and intellectual. All knowledge
starts from sensuous experience. There are no innate ideas.
External objects stimulate the senses and effect a modification of
the sensuous faculties which results in a sensuous percipient act,
a sensation or perception by which the mind becomes cognizant of
the concrete individual object, e. g., some sensible quality of the
thing acting on the sense. But, because sense and intellect are
powers of the same soul, the latter is now wakened, as it were,
into activity, and lays hold of its own proper object in the
sensuous presentation. The object is the essence, or nature of the
thing, omitting its individualizing conditions. The act by which
the intellect thus apprehends the abstract essence, when viewed as
a modification of the intellect, was called by the Schoolmen
species intelligibilis; when viewed as the realization or
utterance of the thought of the object to itself by the intellect,
they termed it the verbum mentale. In this first stage it
prescinds alike from universality and individuality. But the
intellect does not stop there. It recognizes its object as capable
of indefinite multiplication. In other words it generalizes the
abstract essence and thereby constitutes it a reflex or formally
universal concept, or idea. By comparison, reflection, and
generalization, the elaboration of the idea is continued until we
attain to the distinct and precise concepts, or ideas, which
accurate science demands.

IDEA THE INSTRUMENT, NOT THE OBJECT,
OF COGNITION

It is important to note that in the Scholastic theory the
immediate object of the intellectual act of perception is not the
idea or concept. It is the external reality, the nature or essence
of the thing apprehended. The idea, when considered as part of the
process of direct perception, is itself the subjective act of
cognition, not the thing cognized. It is a vital, immanent
operation by which the mind is modified and determined directly to
know the object perceived. The psychologist may subsequently
reflect upon this intellectual idea and make it the subject of his
consideration, or the ordinary man may recall it by memory for
purposes of comparison, but in the original act of apprehension it
is the means by which the mind knows, not the object which it knows
 "est id quo res cognoscitur non id quod
cognoscitur". This constitutes a fundamental point of difference
between the Scholastic doctrine of perception and that held by
Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and a very large proportion of modern
philosophers. For Locke and Berkeley the object immediately
perceived is the idea. The existence of material objects, if we
believe in them, can, in their view, only be justified as an
inference from effect to cause. Berkeley and idealists generally
deny the validity of that inference; and if the theory of immediate
perception be altogether abandoned, it seems difficult to warrant
the claim of the human mind to a genuine knowledge of external
reality. In the Scholastic view, knowledge is essentially of
reality, and this reality is not dependent on the (finite) mind
which knows it. The knower is something apart from his actualized
knowing, and the known object is something apart from its being
actually known. The thing must be before it can be known; the act
of knowledge does not set up but presupposes the object. It is of
the object that we are directly conscious, not of the idea. In
popular language we sometimes call the object "an idea", but in
such cases it is in a totally different sense, and we recognize the
term as signifying a purely mental creation.

VALIDITY OF IDEAS

There remains the problem of the validity, the objective worth,
of our ideas, though this question is already in great part
answered by what has gone before. As all cognition is by ideas,
taken in their widest signification, it is obvious that the
question of the validity of our ideas in this broad sense is that
of the truth of our knowledge as a whole. To dispute this is to
take up the position of complete scepticism, and this, as has often
been pointed out, means intellectual suicide. Any chain of
reasoning by which it is attempted to demonstrate the falsity of
our ideas has to employ ideas, and, in so far as it demands assent
to the conclusion, implies belief in the validity of all the ideas
employed in the premises. Again, assent to the fundamental
mathematical and logical axioms, including that of the principle of
contradiction, implies admission of the truth of the ideas
expressed in these principles. With respect to the objective worth
of ideas, as involved in perception generally, the question raised
is that of the existence of an independent material world
comprising other human beings. The idealism of Hume and Mill, if
consistently followed out, would lead logically to solipsism, or
the denial of any other being save self. Finally, the main
foundation of all idealism and scepticism is the assumption,
explicit or implicit, that the mind can never know what is outside
of itself, that an idea as a cognition can never transcend itself,
that we can never reach to and mentally lay hold of or apprehend
anything save what is actually a present state of our own
consciousness, or a subjective modification of our own mind. Now,
first, this is an a priori assumption for which no real proof is or
can be given; secondly, it is not only not self-evident, but
directly contrary to what our mind affirms to be our direct
intellectual experience. What it is possible for a human mind to
apprehend cannot be laid down a priori. It must be ascertained by
careful observation and, study of the process of cognition. But
that the mind cannot apprehend or cognize any reality existing
outside of itself is not only not a self-evident proposition, it is
directly contrary to what such observation and the testimony of
mankind affirm to be our actual intellectual experience. Further,
Mill and most extreme idealists have to admit the validity of
memory and expectation; but, in every act of memory or expectation
which refers to any experience outside the present instant, our
cognition is transcending the present modifications of the mind and
judging about reality beyond and distinct from the present states
of consciousness. Considering the question as specially concerned
with universal concepts, only the theory of moderate realism
adopted by Aristotle and St.
Thomas can claim to guarantee objective value to our ideas.
According to the nominalist and conceptualist theories there is no
true correlate in rerum naturâ corresponding to the
universal term. Were this the case there would be no valid ground
for the general statements which constitute science. But
mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and the rest claim that
their universal propositions are true and deal with realities. It
is involved in the very notion of science that the physical laws
formulated by the mind do mirror the working of agents in the
external universe. But unless the general terms of these sciences
and the ideas which they signify have, corresponding to them,
objective correlatives in the common natures and essences of the
objects with which these sciences deal, then those general
statements are unreal, and each science is nothing more than a
consistently arranged system of barren propositions deduced from
empty, arbitrary definitions, and postulates, having no more
genuine objective value than any other coherently devised scheme of
artificial symbols standing for imaginary beings. But the
fruitfulness of science and the constant verifications of its
predictions are incompatible with such an hypothesis.